Description
Alexis Wright is one of Australia's finest Aboriginal writers. CARPENTARIA is her second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, from where her people come. The novel's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the queen of the rubbish-dump Angel Day and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stride like giants across this storm-swept world.… (more)
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Publication
Giramondo Publishing Company (2007)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Widsith
This baffling, dreamlike epic rushes you up in a semi-conscious swirl of language into the wild tropical north of Australia, where Queensland sweeps round to cradle an armful of the Pacific in the form of the Gulf of Carpentaria – a land of savannas and tropical cyclones, of eucalypts and estuary
The Gulf country is also the homeland of the Waanyi people, from whom Alexis Wright is descended on her mother's side, and what Carpentaria is most obviously and essentially is a hymn to her people and to her home. It seems necessary to establish this, because it can be difficult to work out what else it might be. Postcolonial epic? Magic-realist fantasy? Indigenous polemic?
The book doesn't present itself as a simple proposition. At more than 500 pages, it feels, just from heaving the thing up in front of your face, like something that will require some work. And the language is constantly wrong-footing you as a reader – like something that's been run through Google Translate and back twice, full of not-quite-right constructions (‘for no good rhyme or reason’), redundancies (‘it fell down, descended down’), misused verbs (‘the thought abhorred him’), even apparent spelling mistakes (‘the mother load’) which might just be editorial slips but which nevertheless contribute to a general sense that language here is unstable, not always to be trusted.
When you read Wright's sentences, you do it gingerly, feeling ahead with your toes, not wanting to put your full weight on a phrase until you're sure it will hold. It reminded me a bit of reading Steve Aylett, though the tone couldn't be more different. Here the method is a kind of Aboriginal English that dares you to think of it as ‘broken’, mixing myth, jokes, and natural history. And then – every now and again – it will suddenly explode into some long, flawlessly poetic excursion positively drenched in the local landscape:
Thousands of dry balls of lemon-coloured spinifex, uprooted by the storm, rolled into town and were swept out to sea. From the termite mounds dotting the old country the dust storm gathered up untold swarms of flying ants dizzy with the smell of rain and sent them flying with the wind. Dead birds flew past. Animals racing in frightened droves were left behind in full flight, impaled on barbed-wire spikes along the boundary fences. In the sheddings of the earth's waste, plastic shopping bags from the rubbish dump rose up like ghosts into the troposphere of red skies to be taken for a ride, far away. Way out above the ocean, the pollution of dust and wind-ripped pieces of plastic gathered, then dropped with the salty humidity and sank in the waters far below, to become the unsightly decoration of a groper's highway deep in the sea.
The nearest thing we have to a hero is the patriarch Normal Phantom, who lives in an indigenous settlement outside the town of Desperance. Norm's community is in a long-running feud with another Aboriginal group on the other side of the village; and between them are the whitefellas of Uptown, run by the violent Mayor Bruiser, policed by the corrupt Officer Truthful, and inhabited by a roster of colourful characters like Lloydie, who runs the pub and is in love with a mermaid trapped in the wood of his bar. Meanwhile Norm's partner, Angel Day, has run off with the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, who leads a convoy endlessly following the Dreaming tracks, while his son Will Phantom is mounting a violent resistance against the local mining corporation…
These are figures that at times seem like characters in a joke (‘An Englishman, and Irishman and an Australian walked into a bar…’), and at other times assume the epic quality of mythic archetypes. Their stories blur into one another, with narratives that follow multiple timelines simultaneously, or loop back on themselves without warning. This is not a case of ‘magic realism’ (an unsatisfactory term), performed for metaphorical effect; rather, it deliberately reflects, I think, a completely different view of the world, one in which time and individuals are not especially important, and where the events of distant myth play an active role in current relationships and causalities.
The language of the novel is richly localised, busy with snappy gums, spearwood, eskies, myalls, skerricks, whirly-winds, gibber stones, sooty grunters, min min lights, big bikkies and a host of other Australianisms that pushed my [book:Australian National Dictionary|31867703] to the limits. Not to mention the many Aboriginal terms. The last time the Waanyi language was surveyed, in the early 80s, researchers found ‘about ten’ native speakers, so it's doubtless extinct by now; Carpentaria is, in this as in other things, an act of preservation as well as of modernisation.
I just don't know who to recommend it to. After a hundred pages I didn't understand it at all. After two hundred pages I thought I understood it, and didn't like it. I might easily have ditched it there, but the book review hanging over my head induced me to carry on – fortunately. After three hundred pages I was gripped, and by the time I finished I was deeply moved. Since then it's only kept expanding in my head, so that I now feel it's one of the most extraordinary books I've read in a long time. Lyrical, passionate, and seemingly detached from all the usual artistic traditions, it feels like you're hearing the genuine voice of a strange and distant land that has not been shown in literature before.
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streams, melaleucas, songlines, unscrupulous mining corporations, and back-country bogan settlements.The Gulf country is also the homeland of the Waanyi people, from whom Alexis Wright is descended on her mother's side, and what Carpentaria is most obviously and essentially is a hymn to her people and to her home. It seems necessary to establish this, because it can be difficult to work out what else it might be. Postcolonial epic? Magic-realist fantasy? Indigenous polemic?
The book doesn't present itself as a simple proposition. At more than 500 pages, it feels, just from heaving the thing up in front of your face, like something that will require some work. And the language is constantly wrong-footing you as a reader – like something that's been run through Google Translate and back twice, full of not-quite-right constructions (‘for no good rhyme or reason’), redundancies (‘it fell down, descended down’), misused verbs (‘the thought abhorred him’), even apparent spelling mistakes (‘the mother load’) which might just be editorial slips but which nevertheless contribute to a general sense that language here is unstable, not always to be trusted.
When you read Wright's sentences, you do it gingerly, feeling ahead with your toes, not wanting to put your full weight on a phrase until you're sure it will hold. It reminded me a bit of reading Steve Aylett, though the tone couldn't be more different. Here the method is a kind of Aboriginal English that dares you to think of it as ‘broken’, mixing myth, jokes, and natural history. And then – every now and again – it will suddenly explode into some long, flawlessly poetic excursion positively drenched in the local landscape:
Thousands of dry balls of lemon-coloured spinifex, uprooted by the storm, rolled into town and were swept out to sea. From the termite mounds dotting the old country the dust storm gathered up untold swarms of flying ants dizzy with the smell of rain and sent them flying with the wind. Dead birds flew past. Animals racing in frightened droves were left behind in full flight, impaled on barbed-wire spikes along the boundary fences. In the sheddings of the earth's waste, plastic shopping bags from the rubbish dump rose up like ghosts into the troposphere of red skies to be taken for a ride, far away. Way out above the ocean, the pollution of dust and wind-ripped pieces of plastic gathered, then dropped with the salty humidity and sank in the waters far below, to become the unsightly decoration of a groper's highway deep in the sea.
The nearest thing we have to a hero is the patriarch Normal Phantom, who lives in an indigenous settlement outside the town of Desperance. Norm's community is in a long-running feud with another Aboriginal group on the other side of the village; and between them are the whitefellas of Uptown, run by the violent Mayor Bruiser, policed by the corrupt Officer Truthful, and inhabited by a roster of colourful characters like Lloydie, who runs the pub and is in love with a mermaid trapped in the wood of his bar. Meanwhile Norm's partner, Angel Day, has run off with the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, who leads a convoy endlessly following the Dreaming tracks, while his son Will Phantom is mounting a violent resistance against the local mining corporation…
These are figures that at times seem like characters in a joke (‘An Englishman, and Irishman and an Australian walked into a bar…’), and at other times assume the epic quality of mythic archetypes. Their stories blur into one another, with narratives that follow multiple timelines simultaneously, or loop back on themselves without warning. This is not a case of ‘magic realism’ (an unsatisfactory term), performed for metaphorical effect; rather, it deliberately reflects, I think, a completely different view of the world, one in which time and individuals are not especially important, and where the events of distant myth play an active role in current relationships and causalities.
The language of the novel is richly localised, busy with snappy gums, spearwood, eskies, myalls, skerricks, whirly-winds, gibber stones, sooty grunters, min min lights, big bikkies and a host of other Australianisms that pushed my [book:Australian National Dictionary|31867703] to the limits. Not to mention the many Aboriginal terms. The last time the Waanyi language was surveyed, in the early 80s, researchers found ‘about ten’ native speakers, so it's doubtless extinct by now; Carpentaria is, in this as in other things, an act of preservation as well as of modernisation.
I just don't know who to recommend it to. After a hundred pages I didn't understand it at all. After two hundred pages I thought I understood it, and didn't like it. I might easily have ditched it there, but the book review hanging over my head induced me to carry on – fortunately. After three hundred pages I was gripped, and by the time I finished I was deeply moved. Since then it's only kept expanding in my head, so that I now feel it's one of the most extraordinary books I've read in a long time. Lyrical, passionate, and seemingly detached from all the usual artistic traditions, it feels like you're hearing the genuine voice of a strange and distant land that has not been shown in literature before.
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LibraryThing member PriscillaM
The author has a distinctive style, which at first made it difficult to follow. However it was well worth persevering as it became easier as the story unfolded. I think I gained a small understanding of how the Aborigial people relate to the land and nature and realise their ancient connection with
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the land and sea. Brilliant characters and reprehensible actions of global greed. Mother Nature the ultimate power to be reckoned with. Show Less
LibraryThing member rexsnopes
Alexis Wright's Carpentaria is masterful. Her voice is singular yet easily understandable—provided one's comfortable with point-of-view shifts and nonlinear narratives.
The story largely centers around the Phantom family, Norm and Will, father and son respectively, who are aboriginals living on
While there's much that can and should be said about this novel, I'll bring up several aspects that I found especially noteworthy.
Dreamtime metaphysics infuse the novel's narrative consciousness. (In fact, were I forced to declare 'what does this novel tell us,' it might be something like, it's high time to wake up for dreamtime.) What's especially excellent about Wright's book is one does not need much knowledge, if any at all, about dreamtime to get an idea of how it works, at least on something of an intuitive level.
With the possible exception of William Faulkner's work, I've rarely read fiction that explains small town life with such deft precision, with such lack of self-congratulatory folksiness. If you live in the sticks, you'll find this book provides great solace.
Her style is also similar to that of Faulkner—though a bit less dense and more clearly post-colonial in its orientation.
If you like highly-stylized, multicultural books that force reflection, this is a must read.
The story largely centers around the Phantom family, Norm and Will, father and son respectively, who are aboriginals living on
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the peripheral of a rural Australian settler town. A mining concern invades and the novel's literal conflict begins here.While there's much that can and should be said about this novel, I'll bring up several aspects that I found especially noteworthy.
Dreamtime metaphysics infuse the novel's narrative consciousness. (In fact, were I forced to declare 'what does this novel tell us,' it might be something like, it's high time to wake up for dreamtime.) What's especially excellent about Wright's book is one does not need much knowledge, if any at all, about dreamtime to get an idea of how it works, at least on something of an intuitive level.
With the possible exception of William Faulkner's work, I've rarely read fiction that explains small town life with such deft precision, with such lack of self-congratulatory folksiness. If you live in the sticks, you'll find this book provides great solace.
Her style is also similar to that of Faulkner—though a bit less dense and more clearly post-colonial in its orientation.
If you like highly-stylized, multicultural books that force reflection, this is a must read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member leoleo
I thoroughly enjoyed the unique presentation of this modern-day, timeless story. I listened to it as an audiobook and found the reader fully sympathetic to the text. I had to return and listen again to sections as my mind wandered around in the story. I have read much Aboriginal mythology and
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rewritings and also modern fiction and non-fiction and this is unlike any of them. The images painted in the reader's mind are so vivid particularly so for me as I imagine the locations and the images as recounted. A masterpiece. Show Less
LibraryThing member deargreenplace
I really struggled with this book and was so relieved when I finished it.
It's about an Aboriginal community who live in Desperance, north-east Australia, and the Phantom family in particular. That's about as much as I can say about the plot.
My trouble with this book was the plot, actually - there
That's not to say that it isn't well-written because it is, but it wasn't for me. There's only so much rambling narrative and lack of dialogue that I can take.
It's about an Aboriginal community who live in Desperance, north-east Australia, and the Phantom family in particular. That's about as much as I can say about the plot.
My trouble with this book was the plot, actually - there
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wasn't one. Any action is kept until the last fifth of the book, by which point I'm sure a lot of people would have already given up. If I'm honest, the book just bored me.That's not to say that it isn't well-written because it is, but it wasn't for me. There's only so much rambling narrative and lack of dialogue that I can take.
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LibraryThing member sparemethecensor
This is a difficult novel to parse, but it is well worth the effort. Wright has done something truly unique here, bridging the "White" Australian world with the "Waanyi" Australian world. Individual sentences will simultaneously check every box of beautifully written Western literary fiction and
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plop readers into the dream world of Waanyi magical realism. Vocabulary of both, worldviews of both, combine into a saga not only of a family but of a town caught between cultures. There's a lot here; it's long, and it's a slow read. It's also truly immersive. I learned a lot about the unique Australian postcolonial landscape and the Waanyi culture's experience contemplating (white) modernity. I also enjoyed the story. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Queensland Premier's Literary Award (Winner — Fiction — 2007)
Australian Book Industry Awards (Shortlist — Literary Fiction — 2007)
Miles Franklin Literary Award (Winner — 2007)
Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Winner — Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction — 2007)
ALS Gold Medal (Winner — 2007)
The Age Book of the Year Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2007)
Original publication date
2006
External links
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